Iran's top brass deny nuking US bank websites

'We are not the scriptkiddies you are looking for'

Iran has denied computers on its soil were behind denial-of-service attacks against American banks.

US national security officials allege the websites of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America were slowed by assaults launched from Iran. The G-men didn't say whether the attackers were backed by the Middle Eastern nation's government or patriotic Iranian citizens.

Iran's Head of Civil Defense Organization Gholam Reza Jalali stepped forward to dismiss the accusation on Sunday. "Iran has not hacked the US banks," he told the semi-official Fars News Agency, upgrading the act of flooding a web server with traffic to full-blown hacking.

Jalali added that the reports were an attempt to demonise Iran and paint the country as a threat to global tech security.

Separately Iran is reportedly planning to block Gmail and other Google services after the incendiary Innocence Of Muslims film, an anti-Islam vid that has sparked protest across the Middle East, was uploaded to YouTube, The Guardian reports. It's unclear whether or not the blockade is in place at the time of writing.

Internet access in Iran has been routinely censored for years, a restriction many in the country attempt to circumvent by using proxy servers or VPN technology. ®